We all have our inner demons. Or, in Laurence Clark’s case, just the one: a foul-mouthed cartoon monkey called Chip. Chip is projected onto the screen behind him during the show and springs to life to recreate moments when the angry, sweary or just downright obnoxious simian that lurks in us all takes over, advising Laurence (“like an evil Yoda”) to respond to ignorance and incompetence with aggression. Aggression such as, for example, heckling fellow comic Richard Herring with the age-old criticism ‘cunt!’, reducing a waiter to a sobbing wreck, biting a policeman… That sort of thing.
Why Chip? Not, as is pointed out, because he stands for the proverbial chip-on-the-shoulder, the nagging sense of inferiority that makes us all do stupid, self-assertive things from time to time. “He’s called Chip because I like chips,” Laurence says, by way of introduction. “His full name is Chip Lasagne Blowjob.”
But heaven knows Laurence has enough to be chippy about. He’s from Manchester. Married, possibly just for the purposes of our Liverpool venue and audience, to a scouser. Oh, and he has cerebral palsy which confines him to a wheelchair. The kind which prompts a flight-attendant, noting his slurred speech and erratic gestures, to reply “I think you’ve had enough already, sir,” when Laurence asks for his first beer of the journey.
As the act progresses, it becomes clear what Chip is really: he is the arch-nemesis of niceness. The scenarios discussed show the difficulties in knowing how to react in the face of faintly ignorant, patronising behaviour when the perpetrator is actually acting with the best of intentions. You know where you are with nastiness – good, honest nastiness that doesn’t require a nuanced response of tolerance and tact. To demonstrate, Laurence asks us at the start to say so if we can’t understand what he’s on about and he’ll happily repeat himself. And when he deliberately descends into unintelligible mumbling, do any of us say a word? No – we sit in appalled silence, wondering what’s gone wrong, and are called to account for our kind dishonesty.
I’d be surprised if the entire audience caught every word, but it was less an unwillingness to risk embarrassment than a desire to not disturb the clever, coherent constructions of his comic sequences and to keep their non-stop delight rattling along. After all, aside from its sheer insightfulness, the show is a marvel of creative performance: tables are constantly and thought-provokingly turned on our perception of disability through videos, photos, animation, text and the spoken word. It’s this clever and artfully handled combination of media which Clark excels at, along with more traditional stand-up techniques – the ridiculously satisfying bit of ring-composition which returns us to Richard Herring makes me suppress a snort of laughter just thinking about it.
But don’t say: oh, he’s so brave. So inspirational. Don’t even say: this is a show which everyone should see to expand their empathy and appreciation of the capacities of the human spirit, no matter how true you think that may be. You’ll have missed the point of Moments of Instant Regret if you even remotely exaggerate Laurence’s brilliance on account of his cerebral palsy. Just take it for the dazzling and riotous performance of anger, wisdom and humour that it undoubtedly is.
